Port of Morrow

The Port of Morrow is the largest industrial port in Oregon east of Portland, and the town is home to Portland General Electric (PGE)'s Boardman Plant. On May 11, 2011, the Port of Morrow Commission approved a one-year lease option with Coyote Island Terminal of Utah to build a rail off-loading coal terminal for coal exports to Asia.

Off-loading coal terminal
On May 11, 2011, the Port of Morrow Commission approved a one-year lease option with Coyote Island Terminal LLC of Salt Lake City, Utah, to build a rail off-loading coal terminal on up to 24.26 acres to transfer the coal onto barges for shipment to the Millennium Bulk Logistics Longview Terminal in Washington, and on to customers in Asia.

Millennium is a unit of Ambre Energy, a closely held mining company based in Brisbane, Australia. The properties are adjacent to the land occupied by Pacific Ethanol and ZeaChem, which is building a cellulosic ethanol test plant.

Michael Klein and Everett King of Ambre Energy North America Inc. met with commissioners in a closed session right before the board unanimously approved the lease option. It calls for Coyote Island Terminal, a subsidiary of Ambre Energy, to pay the port $60,745 during the next year to secure the option. Klein said his company will use the next year to investigate what it can do with the site, saying the project is in a very early stage, so how much coal the company might ship and to what destinations are still to be determined. Ambre Energy’s website states: “It is Ambre Energy’s intention to establish one of the few coal export facilities on the west coast of North America to provide access to growing Asia-Pacific markets for U.S. thermal coal.”

Klein said his company hopes to ship unit trains of coal to the port from the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming. The typical coal train is 100 to 120 cars long — a mile of coal. Each hopper car holds 100 to 115 tons of coal, which lasts just 20 minutes fueling a power plant.

Critics of the proposed coal shipping barge state that they are concerned about coal dust spillage from the railways as the coal is transported from the mine to the port.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Coal exports from northwest United States ports
 * Oregon and coal
 * Powder River Basin
 * Utah and coal